monday songs blog

monday underground #6: “now you see it”

an experiment in songwriting: creating a video and writing the song to it.

i shot the footage ten days ago on a sunny afternoon. i knew i wanted to make a video to inspire a song, but i had no idea how the pieces would fit together.

i spent some hours juggling all the parts and came up with the sequence, and the concept of a magic show: tennis ball in the grass, grass with no ball, tennis ball back. i stole the titles from the christopher nolan movie “the prestige,” not sure if they really mean anything, but they’re ingeniously counterintuitive.

i worked on the sequence again and again until i liked the transitions. i started playing with the effects at that point, which upped the complexity quite a bit.

after watching a few times i sat at the piano and a mic and performed a spontaneous song to the visuals. this was the first full take, and i kept the arrangement exactly as i played it. i embellished the melody here and there to fit the words. and i sculpted the words to fit the video.

then i tweaked the video to match cuts to beats and longer transitions to cymbal crashes.

it’s definitely an interesting way to create. i planned to make a dense arrangement, but it felt fine as is, so i left things as they were.